FMW 9th Anniversary Show: Entertainment Wrestling Live | ||||
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Information | ||||
Promotion | Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling | |||
Date | April 30, 1998 | |||
Attendance | 5,200 | |||
Venue | Bunka Gym | |||
City | Yokohama, Japan | |||
Pay-per-view chronology | ||||
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FMW Anniversary Show chronology | ||||
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FMW 9th Anniversary Show: Entertainment Wrestling Live was the first professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW). The event took place on April 30, 1998 at the Bunka Gym in Yokohama, Japan. This was the first FMW event to be broadcast on pay-per-view via DirecTV. The event commemorated the ninth anniversary of FMW and was the first to be broadcast on pay-per-view.
There were two main event matches on the card. In the first main event, Mr. Gannosuke defended the FMW Double Championship (the unification of the FMW Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship and the FMW Independent Heavyweight Championship) against Hayabusa, who earned the title shot by winning a tournament. Hayabusa defeated Gannosuke to win the title. The second main event on the card featured Kodo Fuyuki defeating Atsushi Onita, the leader of ZEN in a match which stipulated that if Onita lost then ZEN must disband.
FMW signed a deal with the American direct broadcast satellite provider DirecTV to begin producing monthly pay-per-view events at the time when DirecTV had just begun launching in Japan. As per deal, DirecTV would pay FMW around $600,000 annually to show FMW once a month on pay-per-view as their television outlet instead of Samurai TV. This led FMW owner Shoichi Arai to broadcast the 9th Anniversary Show on April 30, 1998 on pay-per-view and named it Entertainment Wrestling Live.